drive backup

[crazythunder]

i see so many people having insane problems that sometimes cannot be figured out. always ends up being some stupid bug\conflict that would take a programmer days to figure out. not to say noones help here is needed. but SOME things are almost impossible. and i see alot of people end up just format and reinstall their os. then, having to reinstall everything, updates, motherboard drivers etc... i see the "guides" section is all video related. understandably so. hence the sites name. but i was just thinking that someone could maybe post a "backup" guide here. basic procedures, what a backup is, where to save them etc... i remember calling hp tech support and having the runaround game being played on me..."it's aol's problem, aol telling me it's hp's fault and so on. no, i don't have aol anymore, phew! if noone else wants to do it, i will try to find the time, or post a link to a good site that lays it out easily for beginners. but i don't recall seeing many "novice" sites.

[ViRaL1]

I have a few PCs so I usually choose to run Norton Ghost over the network to another drive. Then if I'm not being too lazy, I'll burn the image to a bootable DVD with the Ghost executable and a short batch file to automatically restore the image. I've been using this method for a while so I'm not the greatest source for 1-PC backup. As somewhat of a safety meausre I don't generally store my documents (docs, music, vids, whatever else I don't want to lose) on a separate partition from my OS so that I can wipe the OS partition clean and reinstall without losing my important data if need be. I make several changes to my system setup all the time so it's rare that I'll actually restore, even when I need to reinstall.

[gummyAvenger]

Windows XP comes with a program called "MS Backup". It's under 'Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup'. You can use it to set up a scheduled task to back up your data. Then you can back up the file it creates every week or so.

I run a web server, so I need a little more control... here's what I do. I downloaded the command line version of WinRar and put it in the PATH environment variable. Then I created a .lst file and put it in C:\backup\rar

C:\Backup\Database\helmdb.cab
C:\Backup\Database\helmdb.dat
C:\Backup\MySQL\mysqlbackup.sql
C:\AWStats
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\downloads
C:\domains
C:\Inetpub
C:\V-Webmail
C:\HELM.Config
C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\MetaBase.xml
C:\Whatever else I want to back up

Then I created a .bat file and put something like this in it:

c:\mysql\bin\mysqldump -l --all-databases -a --user=root --password=rootpassword -r c:\Backup\MySQL\mysqlbackup.sql

rar a -v1000m -y c:\backup\rar\backup @c:\backup\rar\backup.lst

%windir%\system32\ftp.exe -s:%~f0
goto done
open backups.ev1servers.net
ftp_username
ftp_password
binary

del backup.rar
del backup.part1.rar
del backup.part2.rar
del backup.part3.rar
del backup.part4.rar
del backup.part5.rar
del backup.part6.rar
del backup.part7.rar
del backup.part8.rar
del backup.part9.rar

put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part1.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part2.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part3.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part4.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part5.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part6.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part7.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part8.rar
put c:\Backup\Rar\backup.part9.rar
bye
:done
@echo off
cls
exit

This creates 1000 meg backup files and FTPs them to a remote location. I have this set up as a scheduled task to run nightly. This could easily be modified to work with just about any home computer.